PSA: iOS 7 Is Out, And You Should Update To It

Just a friendly reminder: iOS 7, probably the most compelling product Apple talked about last week, is out. If you’ve got an iDevice capable of running it, you need to get it. Why? Glad you asked!

Not for the graphics finishes; people will be having a nice rabble rabble about that for days, and it couldn’t matter a bit less. No, what matters is what’s under the hood.

The Notification and Control Centers are probably my favorite feature. The Notification Center is a very clean, simple way to look at your stuff in one place, something that iOS could use a better form of. The Control Center, meanwhile, is something Android will swipe in the next update: Essentially it puts all the settings you could want right at your fingertips.

The camera software has also gotten an overhaul: While I find the Instagramming of every piece of camera software on every phone to be almost as nauseating as the gold iPhone 5S, I’m forced to admit Apple’s filters were actually designed to make a photo look better. That’s as close as I’m going to get to a glowing recommendation, but if you have to use filters, Apple’s gone out of its way to make some good ones.

Finally, the most subtle change is the best. Apple has dumped the whole “Oh, you’ve never used a smartphone before” attitude in favor of designing the OS to just make sense and flow naturally. Everything is more sensible, smoother, more logical. In some ways, iOS 7 shakes off some unnecessary cruft in favor of being more user-friendly in general.

In short, it’s easily the best thing Apple’s rolled out this year. Go get it!

It started over the weekend. It’s season 2 of the show. It stars Patton Oswalt as the inbred son who is taking over Heartshe Hollow (the accent makes it sound like Holler). It’s by the same people who made Wonder Showzen. It’s crazy and fucked up and great.